


Take The Easy Path Home

by QueenIshtar



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Platonic Cuddling, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Star Trek Secret Santa 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-16 15:47:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28709157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenIshtar/pseuds/QueenIshtar
Summary: Harry knows there's a power in comfortable silences.Two friends take advantage of an opportunity to do nothing.
Relationships: Harry Kim & B'Elanna Torres
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	Take The Easy Path Home

**Author's Note:**

> For Jacensolodjo on Tumblr for the Star Trek Secret Santa 2020, who requested platonic Harry/B'Elanna fluff.
> 
> Set in season 2 after Non Sequitur.

It was beautiful inside the nebula. A rainbow of swirling gasses which mostly settled on a deep purple from the blackness of space behind it and fluctuated through to a rich burgundy. Bright gold ripples of micro-particles interacting with the gasses to cause tiny flares, sparkling across the shuttle’s hull magnificently. The nebula may have jammed every sensor on the shuttle, but at least it was pretty.  
  
Harry had known that they would not be able to create a stable warp field inside the nebula, that they would be limited to sub-light propulsions, but had no way of knowing that it would affect their impulse engines. So much so that they now couldn’t even start them up without them threatening to tear the hull apart. It had thrown the shuttle around, almost launching B’Elanna from her chair before she had a chance to smooth out their ride, depolarising the hull to minimize the magnetic interference. Harry had been glad for that, a puzzle she could solve, a brief distraction from the fact that they were now powerless. They were only 500km from the edge of the nebula, and it would be easy for Voyager to tractor them out. However, Voyager, who was not due back this way for another 3 hours, had told them to sit tight. Now there was nothing to do but wait. And B’Elanna… well, Harry knew B’Elanna wasn’t used to being powerless, wasn’t used to not being able to solve her own problems.  
  
Closing the panel he had been peering into, Harry doesn’t get up off the floor of the shuttle, laying back instead, arms behind his head to watch the cosmic show outside.  
  
“What are you doing?” B’Elanna asks, her words clipped, annoyance lingering in her voice as she swings her chair around to peer down at him.  
  
“Nothing. The only thing I can do, really.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
Harry tilts his head back to meet her gaze openly. “Because I know that if there was a way to get the impulse engines working right now, you would have figured it out an hour ago.”  
  
There’s a power in his honesty, and he knows it. It disarms her instantly.  
  
B’Elanna lets out a short sharp laugh, the sound echoing around them in the shuttle. She pushes away from the chair to join him on the floor, her hand warm and solid on his shoulder. “Good answer.”  
  
Harry is only mildly surprised as she lays down next to him on the floor, one arm under her head, one draped across her stomach. The back of her fingers brush against his elbow, her thigh rests at ease against his.  
  
“I’m… I’m not very good at doing nothing.” A sigh. A confession.  
  
“I know.”  
  
A comfortable silence sits between them as they watch the nebula sparkling outside the shuttle.  
  
“It really is beautiful.” B’Elanna admits. “I suppose I shouldn’t complain. I’m sure there are planet bound people who would be jealous of this view.”  
  
“Yeah.” Harry agrees. “Well, definitely the view, but maybe not this exact scenario.”  
  
“Maybe not. It’s better than being on any planet though.”  
  
B’Elanna’s smile is evident in her voice and Harry turns his head to watch her as she watches the nebula. “Even Earth?”  
  
“Even Earth.” She confirms, turning her head to meet his gaze. “There’s nothing for me there.”  
  
Logically, Harry knows this. He knows that she has no family waiting, just a rebellion to be continued. A harsh life of fear and fighting. If she doesn’t end up in a Starfleet cell upon their return, a rough punishment for living an even rougher Marquis life. But when the entire ship is so focused on one goal, a goal so entrenched in everything they do, everything they work for, it’s easy to forget. Harry knows that B’Elanna is working hard every day on Voyager for his goal, not hers. Working to get him home. Still, it’s uncomfortable for him to hear.  
  
Harry finds her hand with his, threads their fingers together and squeezes. “There _will _be, after _we _get back there. My parents will take you in. Feed you, they love to do that. They’ll adopt you the way they did with my school friends.”  
  
“I can meet your girlfriend.”  
  
Harry opens his mouth to speak before he has even decided on what to say and he pauses there a moment, mouth open, searching for the words for his sadness.  
  
“I don’t expect Libby to wait.”  
  
Watching the expression that shadows across Harry’s face, B’Elanna regrets asking, regrets exposing that wound and causing her friend pain. “I’m sorry Harry.”  
  
“It’s okay. What I learned from the alternate time stream is that it’s not fair to expect her to wait. Life doesn’t stop. She’ll grieve… and move on. And that’s okay. I want her to be happy.”  
  
B’Elanna squeezes his hand back in a gesture of comfort. She doesn’t quite get how Harry can feel that way, how he can be so readily accepting of it all, but she understands the concept. She knows that she would have trouble coming to peace with the situation if it was her in his position. Where Harry is sad, she would be angry, and she wonders if that would be easier for him somehow, if anger would hurt him less. But she knows that deep down, Harry isn’t angry like she is, he doesn’t become frustrated at these situations the way she does. The fire that rages in her doesn’t burn in him. He is open and caring, Harry has learnt somewhere along the way that there is a power in his vulnerability, in his willingness to trust people. In thinking the best of people, he has found a way of bringing their better sides out, and it works, in most cases. B’Elanna, most of all people, is grateful for this. Grateful for his companionship.  
  
“I guess at least we’re loveless out here together.”  
  
“Not necessarily. You should give Tom a chance.”  
  
B’Elanna scoffs. “ _Paris _is a pig.”  
  
“You might not say that if you actually take the time to get to know him.”  
  
Logically, she knows that if Harry sees something worthwhile in Paris she could make worse decisions than to give him the chance to at least be her friend. But there are some days where the brash young lieutenant riles her up by merely existing.  
  
B’Elanna sighs. “You know what? I wish I was in love with you, Harry. I wish life was that easy.”  
  
Harry laughs, because he gets it, he really does. Harry knows he’s the first person she’s really let get close to her in a long time. She’s not saying that she doesn’t love him, because she does, and he knows that. He knows it’s not just because trauma bonds are formed in the surreal moments when you’re avoiding being shot and your lungs are on fire from acrid smoke. The hard things, like dragging a crewmate’s body out from under fallen bulkheads while praying that they’re still alive, pave the ground for the easy things, like the late nights in the mess hall and the happiness that comes from simply hearing a friend’s laughter. Harry has no doubt of how much she cares. But there’s no spark between them, no desire fuelled fire. There’s just nothing there. Which means for B’Elanna, if she wants to soothe that loneliness, she’s going to have to keep opening up and letting people in. Which Harry knows is hard. For B’Elanna, it will be difficult, painful. She’ll have to unlearn behavioural patterns and survival mechanisms born out of past trauma, and there are no easy ways to skirt around that, the only way out, the only way to heal is through.  
  
Harry slides over and rests his cheek against his friend’s shoulder, eyes never leaving the nebula.  
  
“It’s not like you to want to take the easy route, Marquis.”  
  
“Yeah. Well. Maybe I’m just tired.” B’Elanna turns her face away from the nebula to meet Harry’s gaze to see him smile at her. “Maybe taking the easy path is starting to make sense.”  
  
A slow beeping echoes throughout the shuttle and she stands, leaning over the back of the pilot’s chair to read the console’s display.  
  
“That’s the proximity alert. Voyager’s back early.”  
  
Harry watches her upside down from his position flat on the floor as she reaches a hand down to help pull him to his feet.  
  
“Come on Harry, let’s go home.”______


End file.
